Tag Archives: Seung-Hui Cho

“Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” These words, asked of the American people less than a week ago by President Barack Obama, echo a plea repeated by civilized peoples, and dramatized in literature, at least as far back as the ancient Greek city-states.

You must understand: Literature and film only present extreme manifestations of what regular human beings endure every day. They amplify everyday experience. In short, they only exaggerate, but they do not change the basic truths.

Oedipus, in fear of his own inadequacy, called for a scapegoat because a plague had come to Thebes: “Whoever he may be, cast him out!” And his mandate did not stop short of murder. In the first post from this series, Zombie Apocalypse Now, I alluded briefly to this horrific phenomenon of human sacrifice, which people today foolishly dismiss as a relic of the historical past, or unique to primitive cultures. No–we do it here, and now. We did it on December 14, 2012, in Newtown CT. We? Yes, every one of us has a share of that guilt, as long as we remain silent, and await the next event.

WE resist change. WE fear our own vulnerability. WE are too selfish to trade personal safety for the good of our society. You can insist on conjuring a demon of chaos, and calling him Adam Lanza, or Seung-Hui Cho, or Eric Harris, or Dylan Kleybold. But you still have to answer either one of two questions: Either, What contribution are you making–no matter how small an act–to take his weapons away, OR: What will you call him next year?

Because it was never more truly said than in this case: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

In that earlier post, I made this claim: “The plot archetype beneath the collective and individual struggle for survival emerges as what Campbell called the Scapegoat Myth, wherein other human beings are sacrificed impulsively for one’s own personal safety/comfort (as in the all-too-human pushing of someone aside to escape the pursuing [Zombie] horde), or ritualistically, for the supposed good of the community at large, as simply told in the classic Shirley Jackson tale “The Lottery,” or most recently convoluted by Joss Whedon in his Cabin in the Woods (2011). In such tales, Man is revealed as the most monstrous Thing of them all, because alone among created beings does he turn on his own kind – zombies, aliens, pirahna, at least, do not eat each other. But a man will slay his brother, or steal his life savings, or repossess his house, or covet his wife. All in slavish worship of his insatiable hunger.”

This archetype is so compelling within the collective unconscious–sustained by guilt–that it resurfaces in a slightly different form of storytelling, every few years. It has to. The plague (perceived first as an external threat) takes many forms, such as a monster like the Kraken, or Witches in Salem, or Communists, or the shark from Jaws, or terrorists, or serial killer (as in Stephen King’s televised novel Storm of the Century: “Give me what I want and I’ll go away” demands the murderer, in bloody wall-script. By the time such a demand–“Price,” to use Obama’s apt word–is actually named, fearful citizens will go to any length to satisfy it. Not coincidentally, King’s villain wanted children too. The innocent, the virgin, the young, are so much easier to digest than the corrupt adults.

Like Martin Luther King before him, it has now become clear to our nation’s leader that the plague on U.S. society is violence (guns are simply one of its limbs.) And if we cannot, all in one day, lop off the head of the beast, then a limb ought to make a good start.

Witness the fearful public reaction, even before U.S. leaders make any concrete decree. Hiding behind the ambiguity of the Constitution, and mindless sloganeering: “Pry it from my cold, dead hands,” as if they really had that kind of courage. A true person of courage would not be ready to so easily commit the lives of others he’ll never know, and on a regular basis, to staunch the flow of piss down his own leg, because he can’t imagine life without the power to kill within reach.

I’m the last person to advocate for relinquishing control over my personal affairs to government lawmakers. If you love your guns–and more likely you love them as anyone loves any material object, simply because its yours and thus has value–and if you believe in the right to keep and bear arms promised in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights–good. Insist lawmakers make sensible distinctions, and not some fascist, blanket mandate. Trade in your pistols and automatic rifles for a deer rifle, or shotgun, or even a compound bow. You can still hunt game and bar the door against intruders with those, and they are not likely to ever be hidden under a coat or smuggled into a school.

Are we really going to roll over, as a nation of 300 million people, and say that this plague, this monster, is too tough for all of us combined? If another nation of millions attacked us, we would not hesitate to rise up in wrath, before we sent a single, innocent child in our stead. But that is a solution of violence. Do we dare seek a solution of peace? Do we dare model for our children the way of courage, and not fear? Do we have the guts? Are we willing to pay THAT price?

Extended Audiobook sample of Clotho’s Loom on Soundcloud

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Telemachus and Homer by Scott Locke. $2.99 from Smashwords.comFor every boy who grew up in his father’s shadow and every girl who has been underestimated, there comes a time to look within themselves to see if they have the strength to meet the challenges of the lives. Together, Telemachus and Homer, the people of Ithaca’s last hope, begin their quest.